How I came to write Your Most Humble Servant:

I asked my publishers to let me tell you how I came to write Your Most Humble Servant because I came across the story of Benjamin Banneker by accident — one of those fortunate accidents that sometimes befalls the researcher. I was working on my thesis for my Ph.D. for which I had chosen the subject of Anne Royall, "virago errant" of John Quincy Adams' Memoirs. Every now and then in my research I came across the name of Benjamin Banneker, and as the reference to the man became more frequent, I became more and more curious about this Maryland Negro who was apparently a freeman and a landowner in the eighteenth century. Then, in checking old records about Anne Royall's home which stood on what is now the site of the Library of Congress, I learned that Banneker was instrumental in laying out the city of Washington. He had helped survey it and had worked with Major L'Enfant on the plans. When the Major sailed for France, taking the plans with him, this amazing Banneker reconstructed them from memory for Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State. My curiosity was further whetted by references to Banneker's grandmother, an English dairy maid sent to the Colonies as a bookwoman, who had purchased two slaves, one of whom became her husband. Such marriages I was discovering were quite common in the early days of America — and the laws of Maryland declared the children of such marriages free-born. This alone would have made me curious for I was unaware of the fact that the "color line" was less sharply drawn in Maryland during Washington's time than it was later in our history.

The more I learned about Banneker, the more interested I became and I felt I just had to tell people about this unusual man who had also constructed one of the first clocks made in America, and, who, without training, had written an accurate almanac from his own observations of the stars. In any time, in any period, Banneker would have been a remarkable man, but in his own time, when few men could read or write, his learning and his achievements were astonishing.

I think I enjoyed writing Banneker's story far more than any other book I have written. I hope readers will find in it the same pleasurable thrill of discovery that I had when I first came upon his story in the archives of the Library of Congress.

—Shirley Graham

From the dust jacket